The scientists, ranging from one of the world's least credible deniers-for-hire (Dr. S. Fred Singer) to a sessional lecturer on the evolution and history of the domestic dog (Susan Crockford), include no top climate scientists currently publishing in the peer-reviewed literature.

The best paid “expert” on the Heartland list is Craig Idso, a former Director of Environmental Science at Peabody Energy (the largest coal company in the world). Heartland pays Idso $11,600 a month through his Center for the Study of CO2 & Global Change, which like the Heartland Institute, has charitable status and therefore operates with an effective subsidy from the American taxpayer. (Funny how quick libertarians are to fleece old Uncle Sam when THEY get to kick the money back to their rich friends.)

Coming in at $5,000 a month is Idso's principal partner in the regular IPCC attack, Fred Singer, who for the last 20 years has denied pretty much any health threat with a corporate sponsor: the health impacts of second-hand smoke; coal's role in creating acid rain; the danger of asbestos; or DDT; the role of CFCs in creating the ozone hole; and, of course, the human cause and potential consequences of climate change. (See Naomi Oreskes excellent book, Merchants of Doubt for the full, devastating story ot Singer's lucrative denial business.)

Goklany, a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Interior Department, is currently under scrutiny over whether the funding he has accepted from Heartland violates U.S. law against federal employees taking payments that could put them in conflict with their governmental duties.

And Robert Balling is a geography professor at Arizona State who turns up as an expert on several industry funded (taxpayer subsidized) policy hothouses masquerading as “think tanks” and educational organizations. Balling was a trendsetter among climate-change deniers for hire, working as early as the late 1990s for the coal barons of the Western Fuels Association on its Greening Earth Society project.

Coming in with a lower profile and a lower monthly retainer ($750 a month) are Anthony Lupo, and Canadian “Terrestrial Animal” specialists Crockford (the dog expert from the University of Victoria) and Mitch Taylor, a contract lecturer at the Lakehead University who has argued that polar bears are in no danger from climate change.

It must be disappointing to be Willie Soon, at just $125 a month. Soon is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But his credibility has sustained a series of terrible blows. It was reported last year, for example, that he took took more than $1 million in funding from oil and coal companies, including the Koch Foundation, Southern and Exxon. He'd earlier been reportedly taking money from the American Petroleum Institute and he and Sallie Baliunas had a paper discredited in the journal Climate Research (it was so bad, the editor resigned in protest).

Also budgeted at $125 a month are Craig Loehle, a pulp and paper industry scientist, and David Watkins, who appears to be a water resources specialist in the civil and environmental engineering department at Michigan Tech. There being no obvious public record of Watkins having said anything embarrassingly silly about climate science, it's not immediately clear what his name is doing on the Heartland list.

Update: David Watkins, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at Michigan Tech contacted the DeSmogBlog today to say:

I have had no contact with the Heartland Institute, have not received [nor have been offered] any funding from them, and have no idea how I ended up in their 2012 budget. M(y) university administration is trying to contact Heartland to find out how this misuse of my name occurred.

Apologies to Dr. Watkins for any embarrassment we might have caused him by repeating the erroneous, and potentially damaging, contention that he was accepting money from Heartland. Read the official response from Michigan Tech University.

So – wait. How explicit are the docs naming people who’ve denied being involved with Heartland? Where’s the doubt here – misattribution, different person same name, either by the writer or by the reader? or leaked budget docs that prove to be speculation rather than fact?

If Heartland presses charges for wire fraud (which they did) then the documents are real and Heartland is indeed very naughty. Case closed.

The only thing in dispute is the scanned document. Its obviously an internal document or early rough draft.

The scanned document showed Koch contributing to anti climate change. But this was disputed… There was an inflamitory comment about education there as well. Other than that all the documents correlate very well.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.